stanles's page

It looks like a fun return to the classic area, well done - it should be good to play. If anyone is interested in following up on Cynidicea a bit this document on the Vaults of Pandius can help: http://pandius.com/cynidgaz.html

Finished my first full read through #140. Doesn't look like there's much that needs conversion other than a few place names and such. I'll likley replace some of the old-school namedrops with Mystara references--sadly, I haven't found any real Mystara Easter eggs in this one as yet. Anybody found any, or see major areas for conversion?

one of the creatures actually being a phanaton, and an interesting one at that was cool. But no apart from that, everything else we could have seen coming. The black pearl is of course now less unique, though maybe they'll come in different sizes presumably or something - unless of course the baddies intent is for there to be oodles of them everywhere.

Okay, here are my notes on converting the Dungeon Backdrop: Sasserine article for my Mystara campaign...

Throughout: Replace all references to Wee Jas with Nyx, Kord with Diulanna, Olidammara with Korotiku, Pelor with Ixion, Fharlanghn with Asterius, St. Cuthbert with Tarastia. Osprem, Procan, and Xerbo are considered three aspects of the Immortal Protius. Replace all references to "god" with "Immortal." Replace all references to the Hold of the Sea Princes with the Empire of Thyatis and to the Scarlet Brotherhood with the Hagiarchy of Hule.

Nice work Erian, and with comparisons like that for the Scarlet Brotherhood I feel like understand the background for the adventure as published a little better. It was like Scarlet Brotherhood ... they don't sound so big, they're just a brotherhood. But if they're on a similar level to Hule, well that's a bit more serious.

(I know it was requested above for the Vaults, but I'm fairly new here and am not sure what that is...)?

hey Erian, I suggested the Vaults might be a good place for it - the Vaults of Pandius http://pandius.com is the official homepage for the game world of Mystara.

The first adventure, "There Is No Honor," has an updated vermin from the early days of D&D. The second adventure, "Bullywug Gambit," has a brand new template. The third is going to have two new monsters: a new critter that spawns an existing critter, and an update of an old monster that, as far as I know, has never even been illustrated in D&D. That one's so TOP SECRET that the adventure's author (Richard Pett) doesn't even know about it yet (I should probably talk to ya about that, Rich... Don't Worry! It's cool!)

darn it won't be the ubue then if it's never been illustrated. Oh wait, you also said it would be cool.

:)

Probably going to rewrite the Sasserine Backdrop article for myself tomorrrow to encompass all this, and will do the same with the Player's Guide once it comes out as a PDF.

anything that you feel like sending along here or for inclusion on the Vaults would go down well I think Erian.

cheers
shawn

I'm with you on using mostly the older Mystara sources (I never even got the Rules Cyclopedia...). Specularum was my original candidate for the game's central city (as Karameikos is almost always my default starting point), but I later wanted to go with something that would require less re-work. I actually had been split between Davania (you can find some info on it in the old Dawn of the Emperors set) and the Minrothad Guilds until I got the magazine.

yeah getting the actual magazine in your hands did sort of make the placement for Sassarine on Mystara much simpler. Like yourself Specularum was an early contender, and then perhaps an island in Ierendi or the Minrothad Guilds. Later I thought if you had to start things in the Known World then the best contender might actually be Fort Doom, after the Black Eagle is deposed and other groups are vieing for control. But I think a spot in northern Davania ends up being the bets option.

The BIG Mystara egg is the rhagodessa, of coruse (I suppose the Isle of Dread's an even bigger one...). I believe that the rest are mostly Greyhawk references or references to other Dungeon adventures.

but the aventure hasn't gotten there yet so we'll happily accept the rhagodessa until then. Cheers James.

You're welcome to point people to our site, of course. And when we do fix PDFs, anyone who purchased them from us may download the corrected version free of charge.

-Vic.
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cheers Vic much as I suspected really. I'll continue over at Wizards. My links to the primary ESD source is on Paizo already, but that extra bit of information is nice to know.

Vic

I have been in contact with people through Wizards trying to get an answer to this. I originally started collecting the list of things missing in Mystaran/D&D ESDs to try and get permission to host those things from the ESDs that were missing or were so poorly scanned as to be unusable. I thought that running the official Mystara site that I might be able to do this. My latest contact from Wizards still hasn't gotten back with an answer to this one ... I never thought of asking Paizo now that you've taken over this whole ESD thing and have actually started doing things.

So therefore my question is, can I host things from ESDs that having missing or poorly scanned items. The list which I built up from asking the community is available http://pandius.com/miss_esd.html

Now I realise a couple of things, firstly that this is really up for Wizards to decide. I of course keep getting a lack of a reply from them.

And secondly of course now that it appears a lot of stuff has already been fixed up in the ESDs the policy might be to point people to the fixed downloads. Of course I don't know what that means for people who previously downloaded ESDs especially if they downloaded them from other providers.

Sorry I haven't read the whole of this thread to see if there are specific answers to any of this stuff but any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated - I've been trying to work with this issue for what seems like years now and it still hasn't been resolved.

cheers
shawn